


Nothing But Skin

by chileancarmenere



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 06:05:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/658757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chileancarmenere/pseuds/chileancarmenere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the wrong scars heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing But Skin

**Author's Note:**

> My Mass Effect 1 Shepard had a facial scar, which didn't import into Mass Effect 2. I had gotten kinda fond of the scar and imagined a whole lot of backstory around it, so I was rather sad when it didn't import. Plotbunnies and angst ensued.
> 
> The lyrics at the beginning are from "Broken" by Seether and Amy Lee.

_Because I’m broken when I’m lonesome_

_And I don’t feel right when you’re gone away_

_You’ve gone away, you don’t feel me here any more_

 

For the longest time, Shepard doesn’t have a mirror, so she doesn’t know. The most that she sees is her face reflected in the shuttle glass, or looming large on Tali’s visor. She sees just enough to know that it _is_ her face – dark skin, green eyes, dark brown hair hacked short. Reflections in shatterproof glass don’t show everything, though, so when she is finally alone in her new quarters, splashing water on her face, she lifts her eyes slowly to the mirror.

The cheekbones are right, high and slanting. So is the quirk to her lips. When she runs a shaking finger across her cheek the skin even feels right. There’s a new collection of scars running across her face and down her neck and shoulders, down into the stiff new Cerberus uniform that doesn’t smell right to her. _Those scars will heal in time_ , Miranda promised.

One scar was missing, though.

On Mindoir, she had left the school early, planning on meeting that boy behind the sports shed. She doesn’t remember his name, only that he didn’t make it. The batarians found them first when they approached the school from the south. Tough luck for them, two terrified teenagers who had never seen an alien with four eyes before. He struggled, had a batarian stick his knife into the boy’s spine so fast that Shepard felt the blood splatter before she processed what happened. It was instinct that had made her scream, punching the batarian with fists that were suddenly glowing blue. She had no idea what was happening, but the batarians knew. One knifed her across the face before she ran, knocking them down as she fled.

Later, as the medic patched her up, she asked for a mirror. He didn’t want to give it to her, but she insisted. A long gash ran diagonally across her face, cutting her eyebrow in half, crossing the bridge of her nose until it ended just at her upper lip.

_Lucky you didn’t lose an eye_ , the medic said. She handed him back the mirror. Lucky was a word for the quasar tournaments. This was survival.

The scar healed well, no infections or anything. By the time she was XO of the Normandy, the scar was a silvery raised line, nothing more. She had even sort of gotten to like it.

Cerberus hadn’t given that back to her. Maybe they hadn’t noticed it on her face; she was probably so beat up when they got her that it was one scar among many. Maybe it hadn’t appeared on the pictures they used as references. Maybe they even thought that she’d like it gone; after all, once these scars healed, her skin would be smooth. Flawless. As though Mindoir had never happened, as though she hadn’t cried when she first saw her face without bandages, as though she hadn’t scrubbed her skin for hours in the shower on the evac ship trying to remove the boy’s blood.

She shrugs her shoulders. It’s gone, and she sure isn’t about to take a knife to her face to try and replicate it. She buttons up the top of her uniform and walks out of the bathroom.

There are things to do and people to rescue. She chases down her salarian doctor through a plague zone, feels the familiar plunge of terror in her belly when she sees the armed batarians, before she reminds herself that she has a submachine gun and biotic power and this is business. When Garrus is hit by a rocket, she stops breathing and can’t think straight till she sees him up and around again. He’s a familiar face, someone she can trust in this madness when she still resolutely keeps away from the mirror and does a double-take every time she hears Miranda’s clipped accent at her shoulder.

She receives emails from people that she remembers from yesterday, and her heart stutters as she reads, again and again: _you’re back from the dead and you didn’t talk to your favorite reporter?...on the off chance you’re actually alive, Shepard, we need to talk…you probably don’t remember me, it’s been years, but I wanted to thank you…_

_I remember you_ , she wants to scream into the laptop. _I remember you and it’s been days, not years_. But it hasn’t been, it’s been two years, and she has to keep that fact at the forefront of her mind. She has to remember that the scar is gone, that new ones heal, that she has a mission and people are counting on her. No breaking down on the job.

On Horizon, every frozen colonist has Kaidan’s face. She searches frantically, feeling herself slip a little every time they run across someone in stasis and it’s not him. The Collectors that get in front of her are bugs, and she squashes each one with biotics that aren’t in control any more, blue lightning crackling across her skin.

_Are you all right, Commander?_ Miranda asks and she wants to laugh, except sane people don’t laugh in the middle of a war zone.

When she does see him, she’s dripping in Collector goo and there’s a grief-stricken mechanic screaming at her. She’s not surprised to see Kaidan’s eyes flick across her face, looking for a silvery line that isn’t there any more.

(His lips brush against the raised scar, then stop. She opens her eyes just as he runs a fingertip oh so gently across it.

_Mindoir_ , she supplies.

His brown eyes are soft as he leans down again.)

_I don’t know you any more_ , he says, and she wants to say _neither do I_.


End file.
